


I begin again

by clytemnestras



Series: the past is always tense, the future perfect [3]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, College, Drinking & Talking, Everyone is Queer, Future Fic, Hair Dyeing, Multi, Polyamory, Reminiscing, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29519439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: So now she's writing in magic marker on the pale skin of her thighs again, Harvey on the left and Nick on the right, inside jokes and movie quotes and a hundred other ways to say I miss you without ever saying that at all.
Relationships: Agatha/Sabrina Spellman, Harvey Kinkle/Nicholas Scratch/Sabrina Spellman
Series: the past is always tense, the future perfect [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140440
Comments: 18
Kudos: 27





	1. love letters

**Author's Note:**

> I had intended to wait until after femfeb to post this but it wouldn't leave me alone... A late valentine's gift, the first chapter of a fic inexplicably set at Christmas...
> 
> Rating will change as we go!
> 
> If you haven't read the others in the series, all you need to know is Sabrina lives(!) and attends Witch University with Agatha; she recently met up with the Fright Club + Nick at a bar in Greendale for her 21st Birthday

It's not as though they hadn't been keeping in touch before - Harvey sent beautiful, hand-drawn postcards of various botanicals and crystals he'd read up on for her, transmitted to her hands after being burned up by the flame of a black taper candle carved with transportation sigils and rubbed with rosemary essential oil about once a semester or so, each one pinned up to her wall like a growing encyclopedia; and sometimes she would come back from class to find her window open, a sheaf of paper held together by a black velvet ribbon curled up on her pillow, long-hand, long-winded correspondence from Nick.

She could practically feel the expensiveness of the heavy ink and precise quill. She had admired them once, his pens and inks when they were scouring books in the academy library. He had laughed and handed her a sleek black one with a sharp nib to try out, but she'd just made a mess of her own notes, her scrawl too quick and furious even after he'd corrected her grip. "You're too impatient, Spellman," he'd told her, wiping a pearl of ink from her thumb. "You need to learn to enjoy the journey not rush for the result." Sabrina has mellowed out a lot since then, but she's still not quite shaken the urge to skip to the good bits.

They kept up to date, and she always sent something back - Harvey got pressed petals from magical plants to draw and study, and Nick got the gory details of her latest spat with the Thaumaturgy professor.

(Roz and Theo got emails when the library had reception because they were less inclined to indulge in the ritual bullshit, a stance she maintains is entirely valid, but which Harvey refused to hear word of.)

Still, it had been different since her birthday, the touch of them still lingering on her skin. It's not that she has a shortage of arms to fall into at school, or even that nothing makes her heart race and or tuck her lower lip between her teeth. But her chest is expanded since she sucked in the Greendale air, and the warmth that curls up there, the incessant patter of teenage love keeps catching her in a way she had forgotten to ache for in the midst of magic.

(She says this, her cheeks glowing pink from the wine and the inherent embarrassment of teen nostalgia, and Agatha snatches the wine bottle out of her hand to down it with a roll of her eyes.)

So now she's writing in magic marker on the pale skin of her thighs again, Harvey on the left and Nick on the right, inside jokes and movie quotes and a hundred other ways to say _I miss you_ , without ever saying that at all.

Harvey says a lot of things - quotes back at her, even though he's still creeped out by Romero, and doodles Salem for her and scrawls the lyrics of whatever song is currently stuck in his head, _I miss you, too_ like words in the margins, written in invisible ink.

Nick's responses are more uniform. _I hear you Spellman. I'm ready and waiting._

She keeps writing him anyway, little half-spells, terrible secrets Agatha has told her, details of the new plant that blew in from some bizarre dimension, whose flowers blossom like anatomical hearts, pulsing with the breeze.

She catches him on that one - _okay, you have to send me one._ So she does, she sends him a whole bunch of them she snuck into the poison gardens to clip, delivered right to the loft apartment he bought in London, overlooking Highgate Cemetery, because he wanted to be near the catacombs and the Circle of Lebanon. She remembers how he'd put it in his last letter - the promise of magic there close enough to recognise but thrillingly unfamiliar to what he already knows.

The next postcard she gets from Harvey is an anatomical heart, too, outlined in heavy red ink, like a figure in a biology textbook.

The first line reads: _I don't want to know why Nick asked me to draw this._

And she has to throw it down for a second, away from her hands and her clearly delusional eyes. Because that can't mean what it seems to, can it? They can't be talking, too.

It's not until her roommate is cleaning a week later and finds the postcard curled under her bedside table that Sabrina realises she never read the rest. 

  
  
  
  


She gets a bit giddy on it, on the familiar illumination of the boys' attention. She sits in class and her face heats from the faint itch of response on her thigh, the the warm scratch of one or both boys pressing words right into her skin, and it heats more when she thinks of what that means - that they're both out there, wearing her words, too, hidden on that very private canvas.

She doesn't ask them about their own little - friendship? Something. Whatever it is.

It's been years since they both stared each other down over her shoulders. They've done battle beside one another, Harvey handing Nick a pickaxe from the mines, Nick charming Harvey's jacket to act like light armour. They hadn't been… close, by the end, but amiable. She’s not sure what to feel about them having something beyond, a little branch between them, entirely divorced from her.

So she doesn’t ask, but she does press the point, lightly, a brush of her fingertip along her own thigh. _I got the heart you commissioned_ , she informs Nick, pulling her skirt up an inch too high in her divination theory class just to fit the words in.

 _Glad to hear it_ is the coy response, and she can feel the smug smile from all those dimensions away as clearly as if he were in front of her, arms crossed, his polo neck bunching around his elbows.

It's an intimacy she's come to know too well, the seven-ten split of, not courtship, exactly, but playing in threes. When they were kids sometimes it had felt like Harvey was the emblem of her past, of her can't-haves, normalcy, cheek to cheek dancing on prom night, and Nick the spectre of her future, magick and desire and possibility. But they're all clinging to the bottom rungs of adulthood, now.

Harvey is not the simple small town boy, home in a body. With his freshly bleached hair and stranger dress, the delightful oddity of art school and weight off of his shoulders has made him something she can't quite predict. His postcards sing with their own magic, heady parties after gallery shows, the whispered hint of kisses with boys and with people not so easily categorised, fingers splattered with glitter and paint, and every time she reads them Sabrina's chest warms. ( _Yo_ _u told me there was no flying without me,_ she replies to the rainbow tourmaline postcard, the most risqué to date. _Not flying,_ Harvey says back, just _levitating a little, it's not that impressive._ )

And Nick, well Nick has a _mortgage_ , which is so startlingly decisive and human she still laughs when she thinks about it. The hint of role reversal makes her head spin.

She knows she's smiling to herself again, nails crawling over the fabric of her skirt because Ximena throws a grape at her, and Agatha kicks her on the hip in their space on the courtyard, a crystal grid spread on the grass between them.

"Are you helping with this curse or are you pondering polyamory again?" Agatha asks, pinching her high on the thigh, right where Harvey had drawn an arrow after she mentioned a lecture on the symbology and associations of witchcraft of the Goddess Artemis.

"I'm cursing," Sabrina smiles, holding out her hands. "Are you helping or are you pondering vengeance on Nick and Harvey for occupying too much of my attention?"

"Cute," Agatha says, teeth bared, nails digging into Sabrina's skin.

Ximena rolls her eyes and begins the chant, the bloodstones vibrating between them in an inverted pentagram, a scorched path burned into the grass connecting each point.

  
  
  


Harvey doesn't _ask,_ so much as he writes out the whole first verse to Chris Rea's _Driving Home For Christmas_ on the inside of her wrist as she's trying to wash the pine oil from her fingers from decorating the altar in the quad. Her fingernails are stained red from the holly she spent hours braiding, some kept aside to curve into a festive if thorny crown. The colour is like viscera in a way that maybe shouldn't make her pleased, but it matches her mouth, so she can't quite help it.

He hadn't been in Greendale last year when she came home to celebrate Yuletide, which she didn't blame him for, really. It had been nice to curl up in a corner in Dr Cee's and catch up with Theo over hot chocolate, but the absence of Harvey and Roz felt a bit like a haunting. She finds herself smiling even as she scrubs. Home feels a little homier, and she hasn't even started to pack.

 _Yes, I'm coming home_ , she writes, the pen slipping against the honey moisturiser she'd slathered up to the wrist.

 _Good, can't wait to see you!_ Harvey writes back hardly a beat later, a kind of quick, giddy slant to his handwriting that's different to usual. _Also I invited Nick._

Sabrina drops the pen and listens to it roll under the bedside table, just like the postcard before it.


	2. come as you were

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> homecoming, reminiscing & imbibing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this 'verse now has [a playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/76xPNbequpEKaUgtZcBYNS?si=cWg90l_QS264KrAi8n6bcw&utm_source=copy-link), with the fic & chapter titles & vaguely nostalgic romantic vibes abound, album cover & some slight reordering incoming

The night before she's due home, Agatha has Sabrina's head tipped back in the shower on their floor, red hair dye running in gory rivulets down her throat.

"Remind me again why we couldn't cast a spell?" Sabrina asks, spluttering as Agatha pushes her back a little so the spray fully covers her face.

They have already cast a spell, in fact, to remove the blue tips Agatha had insisted upon at Eostre and she'd kept up despite multiple trims. 

"It's different when it's red," Agatha chides, shaking her fingers through the soaked ends, staining her hands. "It's fun to watch it drip."

"It's fun when you're not the one half-soaked from the shower," Sabrina responds gruffly, pushing forward and out of the spray. 

She conjures a towel to twist around her head, but she sees in the fogged up mirror that the colour has pushed its way through, bleeding red and angry through the soft white cotton. 

Her neck is stained with long meandering lines that follow her spine and dip past her collarbone, like a sacrifice freshly slaughtered. 

"They can serve you at dinner," Agatha says, pretending to lick the red from her hands.

"Are you familiar with boundaries or privacy or not eavesdropping on people's stray thoughts, Agatha, dearest?" Sabrina asks, gesturing over her skin in the mirror so the red stain lifts up and away.

"No," Agatha replies mildly, teasing her own hair out of its braids. 

Sabrina considers for a wild moment dragging her back home with her for the holidays. It's different than when they were kids, obviously, three years of reinforced history and endearing cruelty and curling up together in the dark when the ghosts of the girls they were wailed a touch too loud. Prudence will be there, too, tucked into the seat beside Ambrose and loudly opining on the direction Zelda wishes to take the church. She practically has _successor_ sewn into the black robes. But Sabrina's first thought is Harvey, the discomfort of his father's house already bound to pull his shoulders down - what would having his brother's killer clinging to Sabrina's arm do to him?

(Her next thought is Agatha herself, the levity she has in the university's boundaries. Greendale is home, but it's also a gravesite, and Sabrina isn't too eager to see her light dimmed just yet.)

It's something to consider, something she's not sure she can fully process in the cold bathroom light, hours before leaving, but she still leans forward and squeezes Agatha's fingers. "Do you know any mulled wine recipes?"

They're both brushed in red again, hands intertwined.

  
  
  
  


In the morning, Sabrina is semi-hungover and semi-sickened by the thought of teleporting home. One of Ambrose's remedies is steaming on her dressing table, but she has to pinch her nose to swallow it down, something she does in three gulps before she loses her nerve. 

Teleporting makes her nauseous at the best of times, but with the sweet wine still buzzing in her blood Sabrina has to squeeze her eyes shut and hold on to her sides for dear life as her molecules quiver and disperse, rebuilding in her childhood bedroom, in which she promptly collapses onto the bed in the foetal position and groans. 

" _Ambrose_ ," she whines, sending her voice down like a spectre to the basement. "Your hangover remedies are bunk, and I hate you."

"Happy holidays, cousin," he whispers back, the sound of his voice bouncing off the bedroom walls so much her head begins to spin again. She closes her eyes for a moment, and when she opens them an hour has passed, the sunlight leaving longer shadows on the floor, Salem curled up tightly against her chest and purring lowly. She can barely feel the nausea, all Sabrina can feel is warmth. 

She fishes the marker out of her backpack as carefully as she can without much disturbing Salem and rolls up her sleeve. 

_I'm home_ , she writes, and a few moments later a swirling geometric pattern unravels on her forearm, bordering her own message and unfurling into a new one, every other letter like a flower blooming from a dark vine. 

_Keep the night free,_ Harvey writes. _I've missed you, 'Brina._

  
  
  


She manages to hold interest for about as long as it takes to down a cup of chamomile tea before Zelda and Prudence slip into a kind of communal trance/argument hybrid about what festival will replace the feast of feasts, apparently inspired by quite how voraciously Sabrina digs into the scones Hilda sent to the mortuary to greet her.

It's nice to be unremarkable, though. It's _home,_ and there's something precious about being as notable as the creaking armchair, and she relishes in the boredom of it until Ambrose slinks upstairs, kicks his feet up on her lap and steals a cherry scone right from between her fingers. 

"They're doing it again, aren't they?" He asks, with a nod to where both Zelda and Prudence are hunched over the dining table, scribbling furiously, eyes blank. 

"They've been doing it for almost an hour now," she tells him yanking the plate over to herself and curling a scone protectively against her chest.

"I'm rarely one to complain about creepiness, but I really would rather my girlfriend and my aunt didn't mirror quite this much." He crooks his fingers and the scone she was hoarding appears in his palm.

Sabrina pinches him on the leg. "A hearty _ew_ to all of that," she says, but looks at the two women again. "But I also think it's kinda nice. They took the embers of a misogynistic dictatorship and made a faith people _want_ to worship again. Turns out Prudence is a source of warmth, who knew?"

He grins at that. "I'm certainly a keen worshipper."

"Again, ew."

  
  
  


Studying at a place where time ebbs and flows at its own will does things to a girl, and Sabrina is not sure what quite counts as _night_ , anymore, so she's bathed, fed and dressed by eight, the maroon lace of her jumpsuit just festive enough to fit in and just witchy enough to feel like her, even as it creases against the couch. 

She's just starting to get antsy, pulling squares of cracked leather away from the ancient furniture when the doorbell rings, and her heart flutters like it did when she was sixteen, watching out of her bedroom window to see Harvey's truck emerge from the trees like a red flare, a guiding light to normality.

She feels half giddy on the nostalgia answering the door, enough that when she opens the door the shock is almost an ache. "Nicholas?"

He smiles at her ruefully. "You don't have to look quite so disappointed, Spellman."

"No," she says. "Wait, hold on." Sabrina schools her face and takes a few steps back then _runs,_ taking off when she hits the doorway and landing in his arms when he catches her by the waist, his eyes alight. 

"Okay, that's more like it," he laughs, spinning her around and planting her back on her none-too-steady heels. "Hi," he says, holding out an arm. "Are you ready for a night on the town? Farm boy thought it would be a fun surprise if I picked you up."

"He did, did he?" she asks, mouth pulled to one side, an eyebrow lifting. He grins again, like it's some brilliant secret, so she takes his arm and refuses to give him the satisfaction of asking more. "Lead the way, Jeeves."

He pulls her in, and in her heels they're at eye-level, his curls loose around his cheeks in a way she can't describe any other way but _romantic_. Muscle memory almost makes her want to tip her chin up and have him meet her there, and she sees the way he inhales a little, an almost-tug to bring her closer, and she knows he was right there on the precipice too. 

There's a rush of air around them, branches creaking and her hair tickling against her cheeks, she's undone and rebuilt so fast she barely feels it, and then they're just clinging to each other's arms at the entrance to Dorian's, eyes turned soft. 

"Wait," she says, pulling back. "You left Harvey here? Alone?"

He squeezes her fingers until they fully leave his grasp, the pressure lingering like a pulse of heat in her fingertips. "It's closed. I have the keys. A private experience, one might say." His smile is a little sharp, a little sly, a little too practiced for her to be much swayed. 

"Nicholas Scratch if I didn't know any better I'd be inclined to say you missed me." She turns her back and pushes open the door, not waiting for him to follow.

"Then how fortuitous that you do know better."

  
  
  


If there's one place she can be sure won't go changing on her, Sabrina thinks, at least she has Dorian's. The Victorian decor is like homecoming of an entirely other kind, bitter and sweet memories flood the senses, the walls seeming to quiver with vice and wayward intention.

Still, there's an outlier, the way there always seems to be lately. A very different blond is curled behind the bar, hair bleached almost as white as hers, the baby blue and lilac of his short-sleeved flannel button down sure to make the owner of the establishment nauseous, or possibly homicidal. "Pick your poison," Harvey smiles. "Or don't, I don't know what any of these bottles are but some are bound to actually be poison."

Sabrina skids over to the bar and rests her chin on her hand. "Are you here to listen to all my tales of woe, mister bartender?" 

"Any time, 'Brina," he plants his hands on the immaculately varnished bar and leaps over so they're leaning side-by-side, arms brushing, thighs touching. "But I'd rather toast your victories."

She doesn't notice Nick slipping away until he's pressing a glass into each of their hands. 

"We can chat when we're a little more lubricated," he says, and both Harvey and Sabrina wrinkle their noses in tandem, which has butterflies blooming in her belly all over again.

They sit in a booth, Nick pulling Sabrina in beside him on the antique gold velvet. Harvey slips in across from with an ease so unfamiliar Sabrina is kind of struck by it. He toes off his shoes and kicks his feet up between them on their seat more casually than he would even in the garage during band practice. She doesn't realise she's staring at him until he smiles at her wrly, a smile that always looked sweetly goofy when they were teenagers but is now just... _disarming_. 

"Do I have something on my face?" He asks, pretending to feel around, his fingernails painted an alternating pink and blue.

"Yes," Nick says, tapping his own nails on the glossy wood of the table, "it's called handsome, and we already know about it, stop showing off."

"Don't be an ass," Harvey replies mildly, smile still firm on his mouth. He winks at Sabrina, the movement so brief and unfamiliar she almost thinks she imagined it, until Nick scoffs and makes a face at him.

"So," she says, to feel like her feet are on the ground again. "Holidays, huh?"

Harvey groans, and Nick flicks his wrist so they each have several more drinks, a bottle of white wine with three long stemmed crystal glasses, several beers and a dark bottle of whiskey. "That's drinking talk," he tells her. "If we're gonna get all deep and meaningful, we need to share the burden with Bacchus, don't you think?"

She rolls her eyes but pops the cork anyway.

Harvey dips his gaze and picks at the label of a beer bottle, not pulling until every edge lifts cleanly away. "These last couple years my dad's done Christmas with his brother and the family. I usually headed to Roz and her girlfriends place for friendsgiving and hung around until friends-christmas, like three voluntary holiday orphans." He looks up then, eyes wide. "Sorry, um. But in November my uncle had a heart attack, so now someone has to be on watch to make sure the big guy doesn't drink himself to death on eggnog. Cheers, by the way." 

They clink their glasses together, the clang of Harvey’s beer bottle a slight dissonance with her wine glass, and whiskey sloshes over the lip of Nick's tumbler and down his knuckles, which he brings to his mouth and sucks clean. Sabrina watches, watches Harvey watching, all three of them swallowing in unison.

"Cheers to the big guy drinking himself to death," Nick mutters, and Harvey shoves him with his foot.

"Where do you usually spend the holidays, then?" Harvey asks around the lip of his beer, his foot still pressing into Nick's thigh, and Nick grimaces slightly.

"Usually I'd head off on my own somewhere, last year I did the Inca Trail. " Harvey tilts his head and Nick smiles at him. "But it's different now I'm actually out on my own most of the time, you know? Only problem is that London at Christmas kind of makes me feel like I'm in a Dickens novel."

Sabrina grabs at his shoulder, almost spilling her pinot grigio. "Nicholas, have you been reading mortal books again?"

He curls his hand around hers on his shoulder and grins. "Rosalind and I exchanged reading lists at your birthday when you and Farm Boy were mooning over each other -" Harvey splutters on his beer, and Nick's smile widens "- I gave her some resources to implore Ambrose for on seers in history, and she gave me a list of key mortal references. The _Dorian Gray_ novel was particularly hilarious."

Harvey makes an odd expression, glancing at the walls like he's afraid, suddenly, that the man himself might materialise and Sabrina finds herself dissolving into hysterical laughter, Nick's own like an echo, ringing in her ears. 

They're both clinging to each other, hardly able to catch their breath when Harvey clears his throat, the tips of his ears pink. "Are you two quite finished?"

Nick grins wickedly but Sabrina speaks first, joy finding her right in the throat. "What can I say? The night is young," she tells Harvey, her fingers still playing upon Nick's shoulder, reaching up briefly to touch his hair. Nick's fingers tighten around her own.

"Is that so, Spellman?" Nick asks, twining their fingers together and pressing their hands back into the plush velvet of the couch. All she can think about is the space between them, how a sharp tug could pull him straight to her, and she almost can't remember why she shouldn't. It becomes harder still to remember when Nick winks at her, the bastard. "So collegiate life hasn't trained you into keeping more sociable hours?"

"Oh no," Harvey says before she can, his chin resting on his hand. "Our Sabrina has never even heard of sociable hours. I used to get texts at 3AM saying 'look outside, it's the first blue moon of the year!' and then she'd be in class a few hours later more bright eyed and bushy tailed than anyone else in the room." 

She preens for him, and he tucks his smile behind his hand like he used to, and she's just struck by how _much_ she feels just then. They're so young, but there's millennia curled between the three of them in the ornate room. There's a lifetime in that crooked, hidden smile, and another one in the sharp colour of his hair now, and she wants to reach forward and tug until the timelines coalesce for her, wound together around her fingers. 

"Aw, puppy love," Nick croons, brushing his shoulder against hers on the couch, his hand resting on Harvey's ankle, now. "What does a boy have to do to get someone to fondly reminisce about him, huh?"

"I'm fond of that one time you actually called me by my name," Harvey tells him, flicking condensation from his beer bottle across the table.

Nick taps his chin with two fingers. "You know, I just can't seem to recall that, Harry. You must have me mistaken for someone else."

"Oh, yeah," Harvey pushes his hair back behind his ears. "Must be the other dark haired witch boy pain in my ass who dated my ex girlfriend and thinks saving my life a couple times makes up for him having no sense of decorum." 

"Must be," Nick says, and touches the ends of Sabrina's hair, curling it between his fingers. "Is the campus life really so boring you need to keep changing your hair?" 

She twists it around her own fingers and presses her lips together. "Maybe I just feel experimental," she says, tilting her head and looking at him sideways. 

"Is that right?" He rubs her hair against his knuckles and smiles.

"Well I like the hair," Harvey says, leaning back in the booth and spreading his arms across the back, one hand running through his own hair. He looks kind of pleasantly buzzed, the same weightlessness to his smile that Sabrina can feel in her own blood, her cheeks slightly warmed from the wine and the company.

"I'll bet," Nick says teasingly, pressing his leg against Nick's, hand on his ankle again, where his jeans end and expose his tanned skin, his thumb rubbing softly. "What with the chemical disaster you've opted for." 

"I'm mortal, dangerous chemicals are all I've got going for me," Harvey says, ruffling his own hair until it stands up at odd angles, looking more than a little debauched. 

"Come here," Sabrina says, leaning toward to meet him halfway. Harvey inches forward until their faces are curled close enough she can feel the warmth of his breath on her cheeks. Sabrina curls a finger around a segment of hair around the front, just on top of his left eye, and strokes her thumb down the paleness until it shifts to a sharp poppy red, a streak perfectly matched with hers.

When she leans back Harvey exhales shakily, wetting his lower lip with his tongue.

"There," she whispers, "now you're touched with magic."

Harvey grins and slips out of the booth, peering at himself in one of the many gilt mirrors piled upon the walls of the bar. "'Brina, this is awesome. It's just… sharper than the bottle stuff," he says, which makes her smile because, well, she knows that now. "And smells better."

Nick makes a derisive sound and Sabrina crosses her arms. "What, does it offend your precious aesthete sensibility?"

"Au contraire," Nick says, disappearing from beside her and reappearing standing beside the little table. "I just think we can go a little bigger. Give the boy a real shock."

" _Man_ ," Harvey chides, still peering at himself.

"If you say so," Nick says turning him around and immediately sinking both hands into Harvey's hair. 

Sabrina feels strange, warm and tipsy and delirious on _that_ image, Nick and Harvey pressed up close, Nick's fingers tight in Harvey's hair. Harvey's expression is strange, too, his mouth dropped open slightly, his eyes too sharp. Nick runs his fingers through once, twice, and the colour shifts beneath his fingertips, all of it moving from bone-white to a sharp shock of pink that clashes with everything in the room. 

"There," Nick says, releasing him but not stepping out of his space. "That's some real colour." He turns Harvey by his shoulders back to the mirror, entirely too comfortable to manhandle him, but then, Harvey lets him, leaning into the touch a little when the reflection shocks him.

"Oh my god," Harvey says, his smile so wide Sabrina could count his teeth. "Holy shit, this is awesome." He runs his own fingers through his hair, the colour even more startling when compared to his fingers, paler now than they used to be, less time working in the great outdoors. "'Brina, come feel it, it's so soft."

And well. She's got a bottle of wine in her, and nostalgia fizzes in her blood like champagne. How could she deny him?

She goes over to meet them, noting how Nick makes space for her, how Harvey crouches a little, tipping forward so her hands can more easily touch. It _is_ soft, delicate and almost shimmering. She can feel Nick brush against her back, all three of them so close she's almost dizzy.

"It's," she swallows. "It's amazing, Harv. It suits you." 

He smiles and leans into her touch in a way she's not even sure he means to. Like they're stuck on a rhythm, their bodies knowing the shapes they should fill and moving on without them.

Nick leans forward, leans over her, and slips his fingers back into Harvey's hair, mussing it up more. "You're welcome, Farm Boy."

"Thank you, Nick," Harvey says, voice a little soft. "I love it. But I do think my dad might have a stroke." 

Nick brushes the hair back off of Harvey's face. "I'll glamour it, the old man will only see blond."

Sabrina's fingers brush against Nick's and she pulls back sharply.

"I um." She steps back, but then Nick's chest is there. A whole clubhouse at their disposal and the three of them are hardly inches apart. "More wine?" 

Nick eases back, dropping his hands at his sides. "Whatever you want, Spellman."

She looks at Harvey, the tilt of his head, the way his body is still arching down to meet her and nods.

  
  
  


It's different, then. Faster. She clears three more glasses in the time it took her to nurse one, finding herself pressed more and more up against Nick's side, because he's there, and he's warm, and she knows this, being loose and carefree with him. Or she wants to, maybe, like a do-over.

They ask her about school, and that's easy to babble on about, her half sketched dissertation on collaborative magick; "We're raised solitary, you know, wayward things. But every witch I know works better when entangled with others. Look at my family, look at the sisters, when we bind our magic binds, too -"

"You've changed, Spellman," Nick tells her, looking startlingly young, light like the moon filling his gaze. "You've always been determined to fix things yourself, go it alone." He touches her knee with the tips of his fingers, where she's pressed right up against him.

"I'm growing up," she says a little ruefully. "It's like what we used to read in my fa- in Edward's journals, about melding the witch and mortal worlds. Coming together breeds strength where pulling apart weakens. I can go out, forge ahead on my own, but it's less if a risk if there are arms there to catch me." She flicks her gaze at Harvey and downs her glass. "Metaphorically speaking."

Nick's fingers crawl up, not with presumption but with gentle wonderment, like he's not sure how she's so solid beside him. His fingertips climb until they meet her hand on the table and then twine them together. "You've always been a rebel." He smiles. "Shaking the very foundations."

"I only understood about ten percent of that," Harvey says. "Metaphorically speaking. But I like the idea of you with a safety net. No more falling," he chides. "Only flight, right?"

"Levitating," she corrects, nudging his leg under the table with her foot. They're all connected there, tryptich, entangled, and she doesn't know what to do with it. She wants, all of her suffused with warmth and familiarity and home, and she wants so much she's almost sick with it. She pushes harder against his leg, tips her head onto Nick's shoulder, says, _I'm here, I'm wanting_ in every way but with her mouth.

Harvey catches her ankle under the table and curves his hand around it, rubbing the same slow circles Nick had done with him before, and heat pools in her belly. "It's getting late," he says. 

"No such thing," she replies, but the words draw out slow like dripped honey on her tongue. 

Nick tucks a finger under her chin and tilts her head up. "You're drunk," he says, his eyes crinkling at the corners. There's whisky on his breath.

"I'm content," she says, pouting a little. 

He turns her head to the side. "

 _He_ is definitely drunk," Nick points out, and well, Harvey is. He's loose, his shirt unbuttoned to his sternum, his hair unruly, his smile slow and glassy. His hand is so warm on her calf where he's massaging lightly, thumbs digging in against the tension.

She turns her head against Nick's fingers, looks up at him again. His hair is sweet, all dark and curling, his jaw like cut marble. She could go to a thousand museums and see boys like him lovingly preserved, art the very shape of his cheekbones and sloping throat. She pushes up just a little, just enough to kiss him just as warm and slow as she feels. It's lazy, a brush of lips and tongue, so easy and slow her heart doesn't even pick up, kissing Nick as natural as breathing, as familiar as an exhale.

He kisses her, his fingers on her jaw, in her hair, cupping her head like she's delicate, and when he pulls back his lips are wet from her mouth. "I told you you were drunk, Spellman."

"I will kiss who I damn well want to kiss," she tells him, rolling her head back on her shoulders, and when she gets back to centre all she can see is Harvey's eyes, intense and hooded, the way they'd get when he saw something he wanted to draw, a moment captured by his hands like a pinned butterfly. 

His hand is still and warm around her leg.

Sabrina swallows. "Let's go back to the mortuary. Let's go home."

  
  
  


They stumble back on foot because Sabrina aches for this, the flush of cool night air in her lungs again, the trees restless around them. Harvey sticks close to her, still unnerved by the creeping dark, how the shadows crawl across them from the moon as it peeks through branches, all of them dark-touched. She slips her hand into his as she moves, leaning up to kiss his cheek, her lipstick stain like a protective mark, _this one is mine, no other monster may have him._

He lets her drift to his mouth, too, just briefly, briefer than Nick, a quick brush of a kiss as liminal as a memory. A girl and a boy in the woods at night.

Nick is loose, though, looser than at the bar, even. Night rolls off his back like water, his feet sure even among the gnarling tree roots that arch up and threaten to trip and tangle. 

Once, he looks back at her, and his eyes have a touch of silver. He belongs here, like her. She stretches forward, tugging Harvey along until she can reach Nick's fingers, too, both worlds colliding in the palms of her hands. 

When they reach the porch the curtains are drawn, but warm light suffuses through anyway. She's kissed them both here, a few steps up, so she could be taller, bigger, more, the boys each a thing to keep her tethered to the ground. She almost tries it again, pulling them along behind her. She imagines placing them side by side, herself above, leaning down into a many-armed abyss. It's hard to say what's the tipsiness and what's just desire overspilling within her. Sabrina has always wanted just a little too much.

"Are you coming?" She asks, a smiling glance over her shoulder.

She drops their hands to find the doorknob, not expecting the damn thing to be locked. They ward, they don't _lock_.

She knocks three times, too fast, too impatient, her teeth gritted and slightly bared so it's easy once it springs open for Agatha to pull her in by her neck, to kiss her oh so gently on the mouth.

She sways for a second, dazed and drunk and entirely too amorous before she catches herself. Sabrina stiffens and pulls back sharply. "What are you doing here?"

"Yuletide is for loved ones," Agatha says, tucking Sabrina's hair behind her ear, lingering on the tips which match her nails, painted to a gory shine. She glances behind herself, where Prudence is curled in Ambrose's lap, smiling and twitching her fingers in something like a wave. "Or do you only love me away from home?"

Ambrose whispers something but Prudence hushes him with a finger and a sharp smile. 

"We should go," Nick says, and when Sabrina turns, his hand is curled around Harvey's shoulder - Harvey who has gone still, his face flushed pale with sobriety. 

Sabrina pulls Agatha's hand away, but closes her own around it, her hands feeling clammy and slow with the liquor. "Wait," she says, searching both of the boy's faces for some clue as to what they're seeing in her, in the way Agatha isn't even smiling, not mocking or coy. "Hold on, let me _think_."

"No," Harvey says, voice warm as ever. "We should go. We'll talk in the morning, okay, 'Brina?"

Agatha tightens her fingers as they turn and retreat, Nick pulling the door closed behind them with a quirk of his wrist.


	3. fidelity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She wonders if this new Harvey is quite as forgiving as the one she keeps tucked away in her heart._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the original link to the playlist in the last chapter breaking my Spotify was acting up! I've changed it, but [here it is again](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/76xPNbequpEKaUgtZcBYNS?si=V3zf2iIBRRG_Y8LdYmAW-w&utm_source=copy-link), I'm also updating it here and there

The click of the door echoes through Sabrina's skull, and she feels her nails digging into Agatha's skin almost by accident. "What the fresh heaven was that about?"

Agatha bristles for a moment then tugs her hand away, mouth settling on sardonic. "Please," she says, affectedly bored, eyes cast down. "Our entire friendship is predicated on you enabling me to bully and or torture boys. What were you expecting?"

Sabrina doesn't like that tone, can tell it's off, but she's still unsteady, too tipsy and slow to catch her nails on the errant thread. "Well, I wasn't expecting you to be here, for one," she says, and winces. Her mouth is too sharp and her words are too slow and her limbs are buzzing with pins-and-needles tipsiness. "Wait, sorry, no. Not what I meant -"

"Agatha dear," Prudence breezes over, voice soft as velvet. "You're sleeping in with us tonight, aren't you? We should get ready for bed." She touches Agatha on the cheek and Agatha leans in to the touch, turning her face to press a kiss against Prudence's wrist.

Agatha twines her arms around Prudence's and then flicks her gaze back to Sabrina's. "You wear witchcraft like a costume," Agatha tells her, her face impassive as marble. "You might play the part well when you're away, all blood magic and biting down, but you haven't changed a bit. Deep down you're still all moral and mortal. You care about what that filthy witchhunter thinks more than your own sister -"

"How _dare_ you," Sabrina finds herself saying, anger burning a path within her from belly to tongue. "I might have my feet in two worlds but I know _exactly_ what I am. Three years at college playacting at independence and here you are clinging to Prudence's coattails again. Are you a woman or are you just a pretty shadow waiting to be told what to do?"

"Cousin," Ambrose scolds, moving between them. "That's _quite_ enough."

"At least you remembered you think I'm pretty," Agatha flashes her teeth, her eyes dark. Prudence bundles the girl upstairs, but Sabrina catches her turning back, feels the phantom touch of her nails again. _Who are you, then?_ She sings into Sabrina's mind. _Who are you really?_

  
  
  
  


In her bedroom, her eyes stinging and her throat sore, Sabrina's head begins to whirl. The warmth of Nick's body against hers, the gentleness of Harvey's lips, the way they'd both buzzed with liquor and something she can't name but wants to sink into -

Agatha's mouth and fingernails. Harvey's dark look. Nick's hand like an anchor on the other boy's shoulder.

She picks up the pen, too delirious to form words, just draws something in an abstract geometric pattern on her thigh and imagines it spreading across Harvey's skin in place of soothing touch, something like an olive branch, something language can't capture.

She falls asleep still gripping the marker, ink leaking through the bedsheets like a witch's mark on the cotton.

  
  
  


When Sabrina wakes, the ink on her arm has been scrubbed off, and she feels the phantom rawness of her skin. It should be pinkened, but really it's just as pale as the rest of her.

Except the other arm, that is, where there lies a simple _Agatha?_ in Nick's careful handwriting.

She groans and feels around on the duvet for the pen and scrawls a brief _she gets in your head, as you'd know_ with the last dregs of ink in the squeaking marker.

 _No judgement here_ , he writes back quickly. _Well. A little bit of judgement because she is notoriously awful._

 _Watch your pen,_ she writes, the ink a pale grey beneath the thick black lines of his script. _She's my friend & I care about her, _ she writes, only the ink runs out at the end of _care_ , halfway through the e.

It's such an instinctive response, a sharp kneejerk of protectiveness that the rest of the night curls around her throat and suffocates just a little bit.

 _Friend?_ Nick writes, a little smaller, ink curling tight beside her elbow crease, and Sabrina feels a little nauseous, but it's only half from the alcohol.

She touches her bare arm again for a moment, then forces herself out of bed.

Not even halfway down the stairs the scent hits her, spiced fruit and cinnamon run through with warm, bitter coffee. She trips down the stairs so quickly she might as well have slid down the bannister. She slips past where Prudence and Agatha are reclining on the sofa, Agatha between Prudence's legs, plastered up against her front and straight into the kitchen.

"Sabrina, my love," Hilda smiles, arms outstretched, "Come here, come on."

Sabrina has her face pressed into her hair before she's even blinked.

"Happy yuletide, my darling," Hilda says, running a soothing hand through her hair. "Welcome home, we've missed you terribly. How are you faring?"

Sabrina lets her forehead rest against Hilda's shoulder and breathes in for a long moment. "Good," she says, "mostly good."

Hilda pulls back and smiles softly. "Whatever's causing that hesitation, it can be fixed with breakfast." She hands Sabrina a cinnamon and raisin croissant and stirs a pot brimming with dried fruits and sweet syrup that's started hissing on the stove.

Before she knows it there's a plate piled high with bacon, pancakes and half of a grapefruit, all drizzled lovingly with honey, a steaming mug of black coffee curled between her hands. All her time studying magic and she still doesn't know how Hilda does this, finds the aching thing and smothers it with sweetness and love a moment before you've even located where it hurts.

"You look well, aunty," Sabrina says around a mouthful of bacon, because she does, even in a lurid pink and green floral co-ord set, puffed sleeves and a collar like a cream cotton doily.

Hilda pinches her cheek. "You look like a woman, my love. Which is frankly rather frightening when I consider you were barely knee height thirty seconds ago."

"Not too old for care and feeding," Sabrina says, mopping a forkful of pancake in the golden slick.

"Yes well," Hilda grins, flicking her fingers to all the pots climb into the sink, lathered with soap. "Ambrose proves that on a daily basis."

"I will partake of the fortunes of the Spellman name for as long as I please," Ambrose says, sauntering into the room and fishing a mug from the cupboard. He flicks Sabrina's headband as he breezes past in search of coffee. "And how's the head?"

Sabrina feels around her chin, her jaw, her throat. “Still attached.”

“Lucky,” he says, inhaling the coffee, steam curling around his cheeks.

“Your fellows are in town,” Hilda says, lightly, face tilted down towards the pots on the stove, bubbling fruit and melting chocolate. “Sweet Harvey was at Dr Cee’s just before I popped in, and he mentioned seeing Nicholas, as well.”

Ambrose eyes Sabrina from across the kitchen, sitting up on the worktop, chin on his knee.

Sabrina touches her left wrist and pulls her sweater down. “Did he look like he was in it for the long haul?"

"Three art textbooks and a double shot cappuccino," she says, zesting an orange into the pot.

"Excellent," she takes a deep breath and lets her eyes drift shut for a moment. "It's good to be home," she tells them both. "And that smells incredible, don't let Ambrose eat it all whilst I'm out."

"I will partake of the spoils!" He cries after her as she slips out the back door, not quite finding the nerve to meet Agatha's gaze again.

  
  


When she gets to Dr Cee's, she can already see Harvey through the window, hair like a hot pink flare even with his head buried in a book. He's so bright, she can't stop herself from being a little in awe, the brave face of him, the reality of his maturity so unalike what she knows.

She wonders if this new Harvey is quite as forgiving as the one she keeps tucked away in her heart.

He looks up at the chime of the bell when she pushes inside, like he could feel her gaze on his back, her breath on his neck. He waves her over, looking about as uncomfortable as she feels.

"So," she says, sliding into the booth on the opposite seat to him, her patent leather brogues squeaking on the glossy floor. "Talking in the morning."

He nods, on his mouth a tight little smile. "Talking in the morning."

She fidgets with the sleeve of her jumper again, a thick, tight knit red that is soft to the touch but sometimes pings and itches if she focuses her attention on it. Her arm still tingles a little bit. "You scrubbed me off pretty good there," she tries, thumb curled into the ribbed wool.

"Sorry," Harvey shuts his textbook, marking the page with a coffee stirrer and hides a sheepish look in the lip of his mug. "You were obviously still a little… tipsy when you were drawing. I woke up to what looked like a crudely drawn tar pit on my arm. Not the best look."

"I thought - " She stops herself, and takes a deep breath, wishing she'd ordered a drink before she sat so she would have somewhere to put her hands.

"Did you want a coffee?" Harvey ventures, and she honestly kind of wants to kick him under the table for knowing her so well.

"I'll get it," she says, going to stand, but he's already out of the booth.

"It's fine," he calls back. "I know your order."

She doesn't watch his back, as much as she wants to, and instead slides this book he was reading over, carefully passing her fingers over the reproduced paintings, pictured so close she can almost feel the sloping texture of the paint under her fingertips.

"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Harvey asks, dropping the coffee down beside her, some of the dark liquid sloshing over the rim. "And I had to, the coffee, after all the free donuts your aunt has unloaded on me I feel like I owe this place a debt."

She has to smile, because of course that's why. Of course he hasn't changed that much. "Thank you," she says sincerely, breathing in the fumes. "Now um. About…"

"Sabrina," he says, a little more firmly than she's ready for. "What you do is honestly none of my business, and I'm sorry I got all weird, but I gotta tell you that seeing _that…_ Wasn't easy easy for me."

"I know," she says quickly, "I know, I'm sorry it's not -"

"Can I…" He cuts himself off and closes his eyes for a second, and she remembers the white hot fury she saw cleave through him when she explained what had happened with Tommy. This is different. He takes a long breath and wets his lip with his tongue. "Can I just ask you something?"

She nods. "Of course. Anything."

"Have you been hiding that from me, on purpose? You mentioned Agatha was at your school in your first letter to me and then never mentioned her again, and now she's at your house, pulling you in for a kiss and asking you about _love_." His gaze flicks up at her, finger fiddling with the edges of his notepad. "Were you hiding her on purpose?"

"Yes," she says, biting her lip. "Yes, I was hiding her from you. I didn't want you to think I was… I don't know. Something terrible, because Agatha and I are friends now."

He makes this little sound that isn't a laugh, that isn't particularly happy or kind, even though there's a phantom of a smile on his mouth. "I thought we were past you selectively editing to make things more palatable for me," he says, voice a touch harder. "After everything, I thought I had proved I was worth some honesty."

"Well what about Nick?" She asks a little too quickly, a little too harsh, her arms crossing over her torso. "You never told me you two got… close." She keeps thinking about the night before, the easy press Harvey's foot into Nick's thigh, Nick's fingers in his hair and the look Harvey had given him, just as glazed and beckoning as the one he'd given her, the frisson of intimacy colouring the air.

He almost laughs, but it stops somewhere mid-throat, swallowing over it, his Adam's apple bobbing. "We aren't _close_." He says, matching her intonation. "We're friends, I guess, if Nick actually knew how to be friends with a person."

"I'm just saying," she says a little tightly. "It's news to me. And if we're talking about selective editing -"

"It's not the same, and you know it," Harvey says, cooly.

When they fought before she used to be able to feel the frustration simmering in the air around him, an almost vibration beneath his skin he had to put all his energy into holding inward. There's a calm, now, even when she can see the slight tension tick in his jaw. She's not sure which is worse.

"Nick is not part of my every day." He says. "We write each other and we've had a drink a handful of times. I'm not making out with him in my college dorm and spending all my time with him."

Sabrina raises her eyebrows, presses her lips together. "I was trying not to hurt you." _Why didn't you tell me, then?_

"'Brina, I don't know how many more times I can tell you that I don't need you to decide my feelings for me. I don't need protecting and I am capable of nuanced feelings." He moves closer, cups his hands around hers, a little scratchy, his nailpolish chipped, some charcoal brushed across his palm. "I know what you are, and I have done for a long time. You are brilliant and strange and brimming with power beyond my mere mortal comprehension." He smiles, a little bit. "I'm glad you're not going lonely and I understand you bonding with someone who understands the breadth of the horrors you've survived. I don't need to be hidden from your reality, I'm a big boy, I can handle it."

"Even if it's Agatha?" His hands are so warm around hers, all the home fires burning within him.

"I mean I don't love that it's her," he says, mouth twisting to the side. "But I know you, and I know your heart. If she's in there she can't be all bad."

"She's been through a lot," Sabrina tells him, staring a hole in the red plastic table. "Worse than almost any of us, honestly. I like knowing she's more carefree again, that I've helped that."

He squeezes her hands. "Hero complex."

"Yeah, yeah, you're one to talk." She grins at him, a kind of lightness unfurling in her chest. "Tell me more about making out in dorm rooms."

 _And do you want that,_ she thinks, _with Nick?_

"I have already told you entirely too much about my exploits. Rainbow tourmaline, remember?" His cheeks pink a little bit, spreading down his throat, and part of her wants to know how far that colour spreads.

She does remember. It's the letter she'd reread most often, each unfurling detail like a time lapse of roses coming into bloom. "I do, very well."

"About as well as I remember the Ximena debacle, probably. Am I pronouncing that right?" He drops her hands and rolls his head back on his shoulders. "I can't believe what goddamn stereotypes we ended up being. Not a single straight member of the gang."

She likes the way laughter brightens him, any previous tension shrugged off and long dissipated. "Harv, our idea of a night out was going to a Rocky Horror sing-along at the drive-in. You could see the gay from space, actually."

"It wasn't until I was out of the Greendale bubble I even fully considered it, you know? Being among the arts kids where gender fuckery is the norm it was like the sky cracked open and I could finally climb out." He runs his hands through his hair, the pink so bright it's practically buzzing, so unrelentingly alive. "And it really put into perspective how fucking brave Theo was for doing it all right here, you know? He actually told me to stop calling him just to tell him how amazing and strong he was. Exact words being 'I was too awesome to be contained or suppressed, this isn't news, goodbye.'"

"That checks," she laughs. "I'm happy for you, you know, coming into yourself and finally being comfy. It's been fun to watch your evolution."

"I'm in my final Pokémon evolution and I'm a shiny, who knew?" he grins, fussing with his hair again.

"Nerd." She says, nudging him softly with her foot under the table. "I'm also, um, I guess I'm happy you and Nick can be friends, too." He ducks his head, watching the toes of his shoes tap lightly against the linoleum floor. She follows his lead, drawing idle patterns on the material of her checkerboard pants, the very image of nonchalance. "How did that happen, by the way?"

Harvey coughs and looks at her through his eyelashes. "You uh. _You left_ , 'Brina. Nick showed up outside my house that same night, drunk out of his skull and tried to fistfight me, then tried to make out with me." His cheeks and ears flush pink again, like the colour of his hair has leaked down to blanket paleness of his skin. "I force-fed him coffee until he stopped swaying and he admitted that he didn't have a whole lot of people holding him down. He looked… really not so good. So I gave him my phone number just in case he needed something. Lo and behold."

She feels her face fall, and can't quite catch it in time, to smooth emotion down to a serene smile before he sees her. Her first thought is _Harvey always sees me, who am I kidding?_ Her second is, so _they have, then. Kissed._ "Thanks," she says, a little tightly. "For confirming what I was kinda scared of. That removing the barrier that is me was all it took for you guys to bond."

He quirks an eyebrow. "Not what I meant. We might have bonded in your absence," he says, slowly, watching her with the kind of intense scrutiny she wants to squirm away from, "but you're foundation of it, too. The first three months you were the only thing we could manage to talk about. It was legitimately pathetic." He laughs a little, and shuffles forward a little, leaning over the table. "Did you not like it, last night? The three of us talking? Because we don't have to -"

“No,” she says, her mouth stumbling over the word. “No, I loved it, actually, maybe too much given the four bottles of wine I drained, which is entirely too much for someone of my size to consume over the course of an evening." That makes him laugh, and she tries not to float away on the sound of it, nostalgia so strong she feels a little dazed. "I’m just trying to get my head around this all. New lines in the sand, you know?”

He shuts his eyes for a moment and smiles. "I get it, 'Brina. But I also don't know that it has to be so hard. I was kind of amazed by how easy it felt." He reaches across the table and takes her hands again, his fingertip brushing the place Nick's ink is still settled on her skin.

She finds herself catching on the rhythm of his breath, both of them exhaling in tandem, the familiar rhythms of home.

"But if you do want to avoid it all," he says, breaking the quiet, "I'd leave now, because Nick's meeting me here in ten."

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr! [@bohemicns](http://www.bohemicns.tumblr.com), let's chat!


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